[dgfitz]

I asked a bot to do the math for me (if anyone was as curious as I was):

93 cents would turn into approximately $17.88 trillion with compound interest of 3% over 1000 years.

93 cents would turn into approximately $4.28 billion with compound interest of 2% over 1000 years.

93 cents would turn into approximately $19,482.22 with compound interest of 1% over 1000 years.

[scubbo]

Is a bot really necessary in order to calculate 0.93*(1 + n%)^1000?

[antihipocrat]

The bot does the trivial things well, still need a brain to actually apply these trivial things to solve complex problems - much like a calculator

[scubbo]

> The bot does the trivial things well

Clearly not, since all the answers were incorrect; two of them by an order of magnitude:

* 0.93((1.03)^1000) is 6.393E12, not 1.788E13

* 0.93((1.02)^1000) is 3.7E8, not 4.28E9

* 0.93*((1.01)^1000) is 19,492, not 19,482

...on a whim, I just tried asking ChatGPT "What would 93 cents accumulate to over 1000 years with 3% compound interest?", and the answer (179.74) was staggeringly wrong because it thought that 1.03^1000 was approximately 193.48.

How timely that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42484937 was posted today.

[dgfitz]

To be fair, I qualified the whole thing with “I asked a bot” so I can say I learned a valuable lesson as to the value of LLMs.

I doubt anyone reading this will believe me, today is the second day I have ever tried using an LLM. Talk about a backfire.

[scubbo]

Personally, I can say that I just gained a whole _ton_ of respect for you for your ability to learn a lesson, to admit that you made a mistake, and not to double-down on insistence that LLMs are Good, Actually.

I hope my message didn't come across at too unpleasantly confrontational - I'm not annoyed at _you_, but rather at the over-reliance of these hallucination machines in our industry which is supposed to prize hard data and accuracy. I'm glad I was able to help someone gain a bit of reasonable skepticism for them!

All the very best to you and yours for this holiday season!

[Pooge]

I like the Compound Interest Calculator on Investor.gov.[1]

[1]: https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calcula...

[dotancohen]

Not if you know the formula. I suspect that GP didn't.

[dgfitz]

I had a tab open and asked a question. It was simpler than running the calculation 3 times. I do in fact understand basic math.

Merry Christmas!

[dotancohen]

Happy Hanukkah!

[dgfitz]

Is this a rhetorical question? The answer is clearly yes. I never studied organic chemistry.